Spencer Glover

Spencer Glover, Made in China 16, photography, 86 x 66 cm

Year: 2020

Medium(s): Photography, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle fine art fibre-based lustre paper (Photo Rag Pearl 320gsm)

Size: the size includes a 3 cm white border all around (the size of the image without the border is 80 x 60 cm)

Work: Limited edition, series of 12. Signed and numbered by the artist. Sold unframed.

£500.00

Shipping - Collection from the gallery’s office in 7 business days. Shipped in 7-10 business days from Northern Ireland, UK.

Return - This artwork is eligible for return

Artist - Selected Recognitions

  • Work at high profile exhibitions across Ireland and internationally (Royal Ulster Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy, Rotterdam Photo)
  • Work in public collections (including Ireland’s State Collection, Northern Ireland Civil Service Art Collection, NHS Scotland)

Further information

Photography part of the Made in China Series

Spencer Glover about this series:

The phrase ‘Made in China’ is synonymous with cheap mass production, the reduction of national manufacturing and now with Trump’s Chinese virus outbursts. I have composed these still lifes using only items Made in China.

These are cheaply manufactured goods, made in Chinese factories and imported in bulk by the truck load - bought in the Euro shop, but presented as rich gilded trophies - the perishable delicacies and unique objects of luxury - typically showcased in traditional 16th Century Dutch and Flemish genre paintings.

In the past, these highly detailed ‘Vanitas’ still life paintings captured the most valuable possessions. These Dutch Still Lifes were regarded as parables of time - illustrating rotting fruit and flowers and presenting moral lessons about vanity, the pursuit of worldly goods, and the certainty of death. But my still lifes do not age, they are plastic; stuffed animals; fake flowers and foods. They question contemporary values placed on popular goods, as well as the economy of overseas manufacture and import.

Apart from the fact that all our lives were made still by the coronavirus, the series asks us to consider changes in the economic and geopolitical state of our consumer culture, our on-going relationship with China, globalisation, and plastic mass production – what that has brought to our world – and subsequently how it has directly impacted our health.

Made in China wonders whether as we reach the end of this pandemic, is our supposed, newfound appreciation of the simpler things and social equality happening, or instead will our approach to China, to economic globalisation, mass consumerism, corporate tax-avoidance, and drive for individual wealth, remain the same.

Find out more about Spencer Glover and view all his works on the artist's page.